Relativity

 
I believe, above all, that Art ought to engage Science in a continuing dialogue. There is Einstein's theory of Relativity. The conventional interpretations stretch the hypothesis to such an extreme such that while everyone admires the idea, a real conception of what it feels like cannot really be comprehended. Travelling at the speed of light in the conventional sense of travel hardly has any meaning. It's very fast one thinks but how fast is fast? Instantaneous, but that may also mean that we haven't actually moved. If I could transport myself across the Atlantic and back in an instance, what meaning would this have? If I do a circuit of the Universe and return to find myself young but others aged or vice versa, what does this prove? It proves that time can be related to speed to define distance, but we already knew that before Einstein. We just didn't know that the relationship, or in more concrete terms, space, was a curve. But this curve, is it real or merely a mathematical graph?

You see, in describing the world, science deals with theories, art in turn, must consider realities. Reality as we know is not made of just feelings. I say this to try to correct the modern tendency of reducing art down to sensations. Art is just as much about exploring and describing the world accurately as Science. Public opinion has been swayed to a scientific bias through a domination of utilitarianism and a wide-spread misunderstanding about the idea of proof. Even if art were to just deal with feelings, there are practical sides to making art which involves a mastery over technique, so while the audience can go to sleep, the artist must keep observing and improving his mind and skills. Art, like love cannot be made just by insisting. It involves a thing called culture. That is, art is a reciprocal phenomenon. It is a shared thing amongst living intelligences therefore like all else, the mediums common to all art forms are time and space. In a sense, anyone who starts to appreciate art must in some way also become an artist, because its enjoyment requires the right kind of attention that only an impassioned person can give. In this view, the person we usually call "the artist" is actually an artisan, a maker of things, a performer. However without having some understanding of artistic techniques, the enjoyment of the work is somehow lessened. Art is indeed for artists in this sense but there is no doubt that civilisations are defined by the conosseurship of art, and the faculty for it, I believe, innate in all of us.

It is crucial for artists to understand time and space and how it plays with our emotions. Music for example has very specific spatial relationships between the elements that make it work. That is the precise harmonic relationships within the scale of intervals in sound. The spatial aspect are the distances in pitch between notes put to use in a composition. The distances are mathematically very specific. The permutations and combinations create the intended emotional comport of any piece. Further there are architectural aspects in dealing with musical space. In general the framework of musical pieces are the chordal progressions. The percussive rhythm and bass counterpoints could be likened to the bearing and the foundations on which melodic expression can stand, or in visual terms they could be likened to the effect of depth that shadows render.

If precision in the relationship between time and space is a pre-requisite in rendering musical pleasure, why are the other arts not quite so exacting, or are they?

If music interprets time as a dynamic flowing element, architecture manifests (or at least in its classical form) in time as a solid static continuum, unchanging in its essential characteristics subject to change only by the changing conditions of light and the atmosphere as time passes. If music imposes an exacting dynamism, architecture lets itself be rendered by the pre-existing exactness of natural phenomena. Necessity of precision in rendiment is therefore not absolute as it is in music, rather precision or at least a sense of order ought to be prevalently suggested as a relationship of distances between the formal elements of which it is composed.

Both music and architecture can be analysed using scientific principles but these facts in themselves do not render any meaning. In the end decisions in what to do or not do is made at the purely poetic level. If ever there was a master-servant relationship, this is it but we must not put any political weight on one or the other of the roles. It is dangerous to start ascribing too much value on being in charge nor undervalue the role of the faithful servant. Like all else in life, there is relativity at work.

Rome, 22 4 2006